3D on a 2D screen

A US/UK team have published details of an invention that will allow stereoscopic 3D content to be viewable on a regular HD 2D screen.

Hagai Gefen (Chatsworth, CA, US), Teemu Nivala (Leicester, GB) and Joseph Cruz(Chatsworth, CA, US) are proposing a technology that could be incorporated into a display or a separate device such as a set top box so people could potentially upgrade to 3D for a fraction of the cost of purchasing a new 3D TV.

The system works in a similar way to current 3D active technology. Both left and right images (where they are contained in a single frame such as the side-by-side format) are split into an alternating frame sequence which is sent to a 2D screen. Each frame contains a marker, indicating whether it is the left or right image. These markers are picked up by an optical sensor and a synchroniser connected to the optical sensor generates a synchronisation signal. This is sent, via a communication channel, to an eye control device to synchronise it with the non-stereoscopic 3D screen, based on the detected markers displayed on the screen.

This is not too dissimilar to how existing active 3DTVs work which alternate the full left and right frame at a fast rate. The active glasses are synchronised to the screen so each time the left image is displayed, the right lens of the glasses closes and vice versa. The technology is contained within the glasses, hence the reason why active 3D TV sets are generally cheaper than passive sets but carry a premium for the glasses.

Such technology will soon be commercialised. US company 3D NOW will be selling their 3D NOW convertor box this quarter which, when connected to a 3D source (such as cable or 3D Blu-ray), will display that content on any 2D HDTV or projector.

3D Focus TV will soon be interviewing the CEO of 3D NOW during the ISE conference in Amsterdam to find out more about how the technology works and what future the technology has when most new televisions are being built with 3D as standard.

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